Summary Of Little Soldiers And The Global Race To Achieve By Lenora Chu

Lenora Chu’s book, "Little Soldiers: An American Boy, A Chinese School, And The Global Race To Achieve," is about the differences between American and Chinese school systems. Chu and her husband moved to China from America and sent their son to an elite academy in Shanghai. Chu noticed that the Chinese educational system focuses children putting effort into every subject and teachers install a fear into children about completing tasks to the best of their ability. The Chinese used extreme methods to emphasize the importance of doing schoolwork perfectly and respecting teachers who use extreme measures. While the American educational system focuses on children’s talents and encouraging them to keep working instead of using force. In each

That is because both areas focus on perfection and practice to be better at their craft. In Libby Kane’s article, “Chinese children crush Americans in math thanks to a mindset Americans only display in one place: sports,” she states that “Chinese students are trained to have a growth mindset: If they aren't doing well, they'll work harder, and they'll be successful.” Americans do the same thing with sports, but in the sight of academics, American students except failure and don’t stress the importance of practice in their subject areas. This is where Americans could improve their education and study the ideas of the Chinese. American education system focuses on talent and innate ability in the classroom, according to Chu, so teachers give up on the students who don’t succeed. Americans could follow Chinese by making sure all students succeed by emphasizing on putting in maximum effort into schoolwork. I don’t believe that we should use the same amount of force that Chinese teachers use on their students, but American parents and teachers should ban together to help children focus on working hard and putting practice into all school work. As Chu states in Mary Louise Kelly’s article, “Little Soldiers' Examines China's Military-Like Education System,” “And I feel that if we just put a little bit of that attitude into the classroom, we'd all

Chu’s son needed an inhaler, but he wasn’t allowed to bring it to class because he didn’t deserve special treatment. As Chu states in “Why American Students Need Chinese Schools,” “In other words, no kid gets special treatment, and if I didn’t like it, I could get out.” This goes to the philosophical idea that Chinese have an interdependent mindset and they believe that people excel in groups and people should be helping the group instead of themselves. This is where the Chinese could learn from the independent mindset of Americans, who excel at expressing individuality and creativity. Expressing individuality allows children to find their personal artistic abilities and express